RWC: The Unequal Freedom & Privilege of Rioting-While Caucasian

On the early morning of Tuesday, April 4th, 2017
an estimated 55,000 young adults took to the streets.
Some of them set fires.
Some of them had mistaken themselves for Jackie Chan, climbed to the tops of light poles and recklessly dangled-
placing their safety and the safety of those below in danger.
Some set fires, despite warnings by police not to.

@Maddie_Gardner@CarolinaWeekUNC To be clear, we prohibit bonfires/climbing poles. Neither is acceptable and both are very dangerous. We want everyone to have fun… safely.

The group of 55,000, mostly white young adults were celebrating their college’s victory in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game.

They won a basketball game.
That’s right.
The fires. The light poles. The 7 injured & 4 burned.

They weren’t the result of protesting a capitalist system that exploits young men of color à la Black Lives Matter.
Instead, theirs was a celebration of a system of exploitation, perfectly engineered by the The University of North Carolina & the NCAA.

But early Tuesday morning, a large group of thousands disobeyed laws and police warnings. Despite the fires and the sustained injuries, their demonstration is lovingly embraced as a fabric of the American sports experience while Colin Kaepernick, who quietly chose to protest injustice, is excoriated as an un-American nuisance.

I’m a sports fan. Deeper than that, I am a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan.
I understand the feeling of unbridled exhiliration that must be shared with a community of others after winning the big one.
And to be fair, the celebrants of Monday night’s Tar Heel victory
weren’t as disruptive as sports rioters of the past.
Continuing in fairness, the actions of a few arsonists and light pole climbers shouldn’t define the law-abiding many.
But that “f word”-fairness and the lack there of is precisely the problem.

Because in America, in places like Ferguson,La a large group of law abiding African American protestors are unfairly tainted by the uncivil minority amongst them.
When mass gatherings have black or brown faces, the media uses the actions of a few to justify it’s bias towards the righteous cause of the many.

In America, public disruptions are viewed as “kids just being kids”….as long as said kids are white.
Rowdiness, delinquency, and criminality are accepted.

Movies like the recently released “Fist Fight” and 2014’s “ Neighbors” celebrate white students lack of respect for authority, rules and property to the point of fetish.

At big universities, disorder and destruction are practically a right of passage.

We know that empathy and mercy are rarely on the media’s menu when black bodies get together in solidarity.
Whether it be in pride, protest or the interaction of both, Black Americans and Native Americans are derided as thugs, barbarians and met with harsh if not brutal police opposition.

Can you imagine how the headlines would read if FAMU students & fans poured onto MLK blvd and climbed atop city property?

Does anyone honestly believe that a group of thousands of Black, Morehouse men storming the streets, setting fires in the early morning would have been so warmly received or calmly ignored?

I, like many others wish to live in a land that uses empathy and condemnation fairly and across racial lines.
But in a country that is ok with spending more on weapons than it does education-
and in a country that is still ok with young men working FOR FREE on national television while others make millions and billions off of their talents, labor & sweat,
my hope is clearly a naive one.